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Jeep Head Mike Manley: Jeep Grand Wagoneer Will Be ‘Super Premium’

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Jeep’s forthcoming large, three-row SUV, the Grand Wagoneer, will be a “super premium” product when it arrives in 2020 for the 2021 model year, Fiat Chrysler Head of Jeep Brand Mike Manley said at the Geneva Motor Show. “We’ve been working on it for several years. It has a long gestation period, and will be clearly positioned significantly above Grand Cherokee.”

The coming Jeep Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer are expected to stretch the SUV brand’s reach a bit further upscale, taking a page out of the GM/Ford playbook and utilizing body-on-frame construction around the full-size Ram 1500 truck platform. The larger, more premium of the two – the Grand Wagoneer – is expected to wear a price tag reaching into the sextuple digits with options, and FCA has suggested it could top out as high as $140k or so.

But as Jeep pushes its way upmarket with the three-row Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer, the brand won’t forsake the portion of the market calling for smaller, more affordable crossovers. “I wouldn’t say I don’t want to develop the B-and C-SUV segments,” Manley says. “And I believe there is an opportunity to do an A-segment SUV, something smaller than Renegade. I see the signs and think that market will continue to develop.”

It could be in one or more of those segments that Jeep employs some sort of electrification beyond the mild Belted Alternator Starter (BAS) system it’s deployed in the all-new JL Wrangler, Top Gear suspects.

“On the 1st of June 2018 we’ll lay out the plan for the next five years, and you’ll see the level of electrification we have planned,” Manley says, not giving anything away. “It’s very significant.”